Google reveals its design principles

Flat design and minimalism get the thumbs up as Google officially publishes its visual branding style guidelines.

Shares

It's official: Google thinks flatter and simpler is better

To ensure a strong brand identity, every organisation needs a design style guide, to ensure that all its visual assets adhere to consistent principles. And that applies just as much to the planet's biggest company, Google, as anyone else.

Since January 2012, under the leadership of team manager Christopher Bettig and design/project lead Roger Oddone, Google has been working on creating a solid, yet flexible set of guidelines for using its visual assets for both its vendors and its own designers. And it's now released the results.

As you can see from the extracts shown here, Google's been very much influenced by the current flat design trend, but there's also a huge amount of detail on everything from recommended colour combinations to typography at small sizes. You can see the full guidelines, which cover product icons, logo lockups, user interface icons and illustrations here. It's a fascinating read for any designer - how does it compare to your company's style guide?